In recent years the theft of mail from mail boxes in apartment buildings has increased enormously. One of the reasons for these felonious acts is that the number of tenants who receive monthly social security, dividend, and interest checks has risen dramatically. Since the locks on the doors of the individual mail boxes are rather flimsy, it is not difficult to pry them open. As a consequence, the incidence of mail box robberies, when social security checks or income tax refund checks are due, has increased substantially.
What is needed, therefore, and comprises an important object of this invention is to provide a means for simultaneously locking and shielding all the locks of the tenants' mail boxes in a gang mail box to prevent these thefts.
To do this, a security bar formed from a hardened and tempered steel is removably mounted on a pivotally mounted support frame carrying the individual tenants mail boxes. The security bar is mounted in such a way that it covers and conceals the locks on each tenant mail box and is movable with the support frame when the support frame is pivoted. In this way the postman carrying a single key can pivot the support frame carrying the tenants' mail boxes to a position where the mail can be distributed in each box without disturbing the security bar while the keys for the locks on each tenant mail box are carried by the tenants.
What is needed therefore and comprises another important object of this invention is to provide a gang mail box with the features described above.